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The Assassination of U.S. Nationals in the "War on Terrorism"

Brigitte L.
Nacos

Two years ago, Dana
Priest reported in the Washington
Post that first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration
gave the CIA and the U.S. military green light to assassinate U.S. citizens
overseas if there was “strong evidence” of their involvement in terrorist
activities. Priest wrote,

“Both the CIA and the JSOC
maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and
"High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC
list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last
year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and
an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.”

In a correction, the Post noted that the CIA had called
Priest’s report on the agency’s “incorrect.” But the Post confirmed, the “Joint Special Operations Command maintains a
target list that includes several Americans.”

Neither Dana Priest’s
report nor the assassination of three U.S. citizens in the fall of 2011caused an
uproar in Washington’s political class and the media.

After all, the Americans
killed in Yemen by pilotless aircraft were terrorists. In the first of these
missile strikes, Anwar al-Awlaki and his side-kick Samir Khan were killed.
Awlaki was widely considered “the bin Laden of the Internet.” His sermons
indoctrinated young Muslims and some of them acted on his appeal to kill
Americans in their homeland and overseas. He had personal contacts with the
would-be Christmas Day underwear bomber and virtual contacts with the Fort Hood
shooter. Samir Khan edited the Al Qaeda magazine “Inspire” that carried
al-Awlaki’s calls for the killing of Americans.

When another drone strike
killed Awliki’s 16-year old son Abdulrahman two weeks after his father’s
assassination, again, there were no outcries in the Congress or elsewhere.

In light of this, it is
surprising that the leaked Justice Department’s justifications for the assassination
of U.S. citizens involved in terrorist activities abroad and the President's agreement to release the
DOJ memo to congressional intelligence committees have received massive media attention in the last several days.

I suppose, nobody cries for
al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

But the targeting and
neutralizing of these two adult citizens as well as the killing of an American
teenager raises serious questions that transcend the fact that the senior
Awlaki and Khan were evil-doing terrorists.

The three Americans were
not indicted. They were deprived of their constitutional due process right that
is stated in the U.S. Constitution’s fifth Amendment according to which no
person “shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of
the law.”

Even killers are presumed to be innocent unless found guilty in a court of law.

The White Paper mentions
the President’s authority of acting in the face of “imminent danger.” But what
is “imminent danger" in this context? Awlaki and Khan were promoting
anti-American terrorism and recruited terrorists from their Yemeni site for
quite a long time. There was certainly time to consult with the courts and with
congressional intelligence committees, seek indictments, and consider the
deployment of a commando of the Special
Operations Forces to capture these guys and bring them to justice.

President Reagan signed an
executive order that prohibited anyone acting on behalf of the US government to
engage in assassinations. None of the following presidents issued an executive order
repealing this ban.

No president and no
national security council should have the unilateral power to order the killing
of U.S. citizens overseas.

It is now the
responsibility of congressional intelligence committees to uphold our civil
liberties—even in the face of threats to our security.